Siena, Parte Due

Okay, so I apologize for the hurried state of that last entry, but I was afraid that it would get dark before I got home. There was a bus strike yesterday from 3:30 to midnight—don’t ask my why they were striking, or why they only decided to have it last a few hours. The point is that I had to walk alone, and Florence can be creepy enough during the daytime (well, at least creepy in the sense that you expect anybody to come up and hit on you, even though it’s just the occasional creeper). Regardless, I made it home alright, even though I took a few wrong turns. My sense of direction is slowly coming to me here, though the first week without it was frustrating indeed. Having school and the casa as points of reference as the “center” and “to the west” put everything in perspective. The Duomo and Arno are to the south, the church we went to on the first trip is to the east, and the north remains as yet unexplored.

So where was I? The Siena Duomo is really impressive. I don’t have any photos of the façade, since it was raining so hard when we went there that I was glad just to get inside (even though that included slogging through an enormous puddle in the entryway). The first part of the interior is Romanesque, and you can see the Italian trend of using multi-colored marble in decoration. In Florence they used the green marble to create geometric patterns, but in Siena they just used it as decoration. The columns are the same quattrofoil(ish) style as the picture I posted before all the way up to the dome. Later in the Gothic period, they decided to expand the church, so the whole front part is Gothic with lighter looking columns. The Gothic expansion also included a raising of the ceiling with ribbed vaults and really fabulous star patterns, which are repeated in the coffers on the inside of the dome. This church is probably my favorite so far—I remember studying it in Art History in high school because of the striped columns. But I had no idea how impressive it would be in person.

Attached to the Duomo is the library, which is a stupendously decorated room that illustrates the life of an important patron of the church. (I seriously don’t know his name, since Samuele has a really thick accent, so sorry about that.) I do know that he donated many of his own jewels to be incorporated into the frescoes to make his depictions look more impressive. You really don’t pay much attention to the books in this room (they’re more of the same books I’ve posted before—Gregorian chants and such) because the ceiling and walls are just so colorful. Walking into this room from the black and white cathedral was like being punched in the face by a rainbow. I can’t even describe it. Unfortunately I deleted my best picture of this room by accident, but I think you still get the idea from these two.

Besides the frescoes, there’s Samuele on the bottom.

A quick word about Samuele—he’s a native Italian who teaches at two different universities in Florence. He is incredibly knowledgeable, but really approachable and friendly. You can tell he’s really excited about the works and that he loves to tell people about them because he wouldn’t let us leave certain areas without explaining some things. He’s just bursting with information. On this trip (since it was coordinated by LinguaViva, my language school, and not ACM), he explained things first in Italian, then English, and I was surprised by how well I was able to understand the Italian! He translated certain important points from Italian in his first explanation, but over all, I think I got most of it. Naturally, I was very proud of myself. I still can’t speak Italian, but at least I’m able to nod meaningfully now, instead of just in confusion. He's a great teacher because he has such an enormous store of energy. All the students wilted throughout the day, but he was constantly excited. Towards the end, when everybody started zoning out during his lectures, I kept rapt attention because I really like this stuff (read: nerd), so he picked up on that and started talking pretty much just to me. He walked over and started pointing from my point of view at exactly what he was talking about, and he kept making really direct eye-contact. I felt really privileged! Anyway, I think one of the best moments of the day was when we were trudging back to the bus at the end of the day, and we were all being really careful on this one hill because it was so slippery and steep, but from behind comes Samuele, wearing his little backpack and holding up his umbrella, humming a little tune and marching down the hill like it’s the sunniest day of the year. Yeah, he’s really cool. He’s co-teaching the art history course with Janet, an older woman who’s American and with ACM. She’s nice too, but it’s hard to match Samuele’s passion.

Last night was probably one of the strangest meals I've had since I've been here. We had lox and salad and cheese, with wheat pasta for the first course. Cold, wet salmon (sans bagel, mind you) isn't really something I'm totally into (no mi piache), but the meal was still enjoyable for other reasons. I'm not sure why, but Anna didn't eat with us, and instead just fed Caitlin and me and her mother. The nonna always feeds the dog when Anna's not looking, and last night she kept cutting off huge wedges of cheese and giving them to the dog, saying, "Ah! Teo ha fame!!" ['Teo is hungry!']. At one point, she was leaning over the table cutting a piece of cheese when she heard Anna coming back into the room, so she jumped really quickly back into her chair. We seriously couldn't stop laughing for about five minutes--we didn't expect this 85 year old lady who speaks in a different Italian dialect to act like a kid. I've decided she's my new favorite Italian.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, and I keep forgetting. Here’s my room at the casa. It’s really big, just very sparse. That’s Caitlin on the right. (Can you tell I’ve discovered the photomerge function in Photoshop?)

And our really huge wardrobe.

I’ll try to send out an e-mail in the next couple of days with my contact information here. I keep meaning to, but—well, it’s been a full week.